The disclosed aspects relate generally to communications between devices and specifically to methods and systems for facilitating improved header compression.
Advances in technology have resulted in smaller and more powerful personal computing devices. For example, there currently exist a variety of portable personal computing devices, including wireless computing devices, such as portable wireless telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and paging devices that are each small, lightweight, and can be easily carried by users. More specifically, the portable wireless telephones, for example, further include cellular telephones that communicate voice and data packets over wireless networks. Further, many such cellular telephones are being manufactured with relatively large increases in computing capabilities, and as such, are becoming tantamount to small personal computers and hand-held PDAs.
Still further, users of such devices are interested in using the devices to access more web based content. Currently, a device may obtain web content relying on sequential transmission and acknowledgement protocols. As applied to a wired communications network, such protocols have not been found to be overly limiting, as the round trip times have been found to be relatively small. However, unlike in wired communications networks, communications through wireless networks may be unfavorably delayed through sequential transmission and acknowledgement protocols, large packet headers, and the like, thereby increasing the time it takes to access web content.
For example, headers today vary in size from ˜200 bytes to over 2 KB. As applications use more cookies and user agents expand features, typical header sizes of 700-800 bytes are common. For wireless modems or asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) connections, in which the uplink bandwidth is fairly low, this latency can be significant. Reducing the data in headers could directly improve the serialization latency to send requests.
Thus, improved apparatus and methods for reducing header sizes are desired.